Hungry?

I've never seen anything like this before.

New pictures!

Well, there's new pictures of the house Here.

My ears!

My left ears been buggin me for about two weeks now, it seemed to have start when I went to Magic Mountain.

After the first huger drop on Goliath, my ears popped a bit and ever since my left ear feels like it's slightly clogged. And now, every once and awhile it'll make like this clicking/popping/bubbling sounds in my ear and it sucks.

Any body got any ideas how to fix it?

Third DV cam in six months

The other day I was importing some footage from my Sony DCR-TRV17 when all of a sudden my firewire connection died out on me. I take it to Circuit City to have them service, but thank god for Dave.

Dave is our friend, he's nice. Instead of sending the camera out to service, he gives me a new one. Only thing is that my model camera is discontinued, so what does he do? He gives me a brand new model!

The new model is a DCR-TRV22. It's about 25% smaller then my old one (the body style is more like my first DV cam, the Canon ZR-20, I think.). It's nice, compact and super light.

The most interesting feature, however, is the touch screen based menu system. When I first picked up the camera at the store, I was looking for the menu button. Then I noticed there was a rectangular button on the screen. And it hit me, this is the touch based camera. It's a really cool feature to show off to your friends. But, it'll have it's downsides. A smudgy, scratched screen will most likely happen in the future. Hey, at-least they gave me a special cleaning cloth.

Waiting for Lila (Supposed to be like Waiting for Guffman)

Arg! It's 20 minutes to three and I'm dead tired. Lila is supposed to call, but I have a feeling she's not going to because things just work out that way. If she doesn't call by three, I'm out.

I fell asleep on the floor for about a half-hour. That was a good sleep, I don't even know why I woke up. I just kinda snaped out of my beautiful slumber. I quickly came to my senses and checked the time and figured Lila most likely hadn't called yet.

Miller called and thanked me for hooking him up with Tiffany. I feel good about that.

Home Alone 2

Here I am, home, alone and bored. Moe and poe went to eat at the bowling alley and I just didn't want to go. I had a super star from Carl's Jr. earlier today so I'm not hungry, yet.

When they get back we're going to Home Depot to pick out some vinyl for the new house, I guess I'm just gonna go with the classic black and white checkerboard design. It really fits a kitchen and it's probably the cheapest design out. I was thinking about taking out the car and like going to a porn shop or just drive around for a while. I figured there out, it's better then sitting in the house or worse, the bowling alley.

But, I just stayed in front of my computer and read other peoples weblogs for an hour.

I found this over at wilwheaton.net

I’m Too Sexy

I just finished filling out the Extended Warranty card for my Powerbook.

For some bizarre reason, my hands were extremely shaky. Weird.

It was one of those 'moisten here and fold over' type letters, no envelope, no stamp. Just fill out, lick, fold and send. Well, I got a bit too sexy when I licked the glue part. It got so moist that it wouldn't stick and it was kinda soggy. So I've got a couple books sitting on top of it.

Hope Apple likes extras with their warranty cards.

Real Tangy Reverb

Wow, what a week I've had. Let's take it back, way back, to last Saturday.

Saturday:

Gina and Michael come in town. They have plans to go bowling, but they fall through due the bowling alley being super fucking busy. So, instead they decide to see 'Rob Zombie's House of a 1,000 Corpses'. I'm still undecided on the movie, it was super-gory, therefore made it super-cool. But, the movie itself was pretty lame. One plus note about the movie, Sheri Moon. Rob Zombie's real life girlfriend, she's really cute. So she made the movie not as unbearable.

Sunday:

I call Nini to see what they're doing that day, he tells me they're eating at the 24th St. Cafe and afterwards are going to Montgomery World Plaza which is just and indoor swap meet. They pick me up and we fuck around in the swap for an hour then head out to the mall.

We walk around the mall for an hour or so and leave in the pouring rain. We go back to Debbie and Tweety's house, pick everyone up then arrive ten minutes late at Tokyo Gardens. I ate beef and sushi. Drank Japanese beer.

So, once again the idea of bowling comes up, but it doesn't go through. Instead, we goto Timmy and Gina's house and drink margaritas. Yay.

Monday:

The whole crew goes to Woolgrowers. A basque restaurant. I try beef tounge. It wasn't all that bad, like roast beef covered in vinegar. I didn't really care for the place that much, I'd rather a steak at Texaco.

So we're sitting at D and T's house, bored, when someone says "Do you have Trivial Pursuit?" No more the two minutes later Michael, Gina and I are off to Wal-Mart to get Trivial Pursuit. We play, and play, and play, and play. No one wins. No one can control themselves and people just shout answers whenever they feel like it and that pisses me off.

Tuesday:

Magic Mountain day! We're out of town by 12:00pm and in the park by 3:00pm (we stopped at this bizare truck stop/Burger King/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell thing).

Goliath rocked, what a fucking first dropped. Superman's line was too long. Gold Rush was a crack-up. Freefall is exilarating as always. Ninja was faster then I remembered.

I don't go on rides that go upside down. I have a very weak stomach and I usually throw up when I go on those rides, so I advised myself not to go on those rides. Michael, on the other hand, did things differently.

The first ride we went on was Goliath, as soon as he came off I could tell he was fucked up. So after that he skipped a lot of rides. He handled Ninja fine, and he was doing good, until he went on Scream. It killed him. I wont say what happened for his sake.

Wednesday:

Nothing happened till about 10:00pm when they decided to play Monopoly. And since I'm aparrently the only guy with Monopoly they call me over.

Gina cheats. Then Michael, Nini and I join forces. We cheat. We win.

I come home a check the status on the Powerbook... still hasn't left Indianapolis. What the hell? I go to sleep.

Thursday:

Gina and Michael leave. Gina calls while I'm sleeping, why I don't know. I feel bad about missing their call, but I get over it.

I check the status of the TiBook. It left Indianapolis. Yeah! I call FedEx just to make sure and they said it should be in by Friday (which was the next day).

Lots of waiting happens, eat at El Torito with my mom. Come home check the tracking the PB and it's in L.A. WooHoo! Which leads me to...

Friday/Today:

I wake up when the FedEx guy rings the bell at around 9:45am and I hear those glorious words "I have a package for Michael Lee."

I go back to sleep for a while. But I'm too excited, I hop in the shower, fix my bed.

Then unpacking begins. God, this thing is beautiful...

I get violent when a piece of dust hits the prestine screen. I wanna hit myself when I get a smudge on the case. It's perfect, not too heavy. Did I mention the screen kicks ass? The hinge moves like a well oiled machine. The fan kicked in sooner then I expected, but it's not as loud as everyone says it is. It's super thing and the titanium case makes it feel as if it should belong to Superman.

I haven't messed around with iDVD or anything like that yet. The only thing that I was dissapointed with was installation of the AirPort card. Much hard then the iBook. It requires removing the bottom shell of the computer. Only took about ten minutes as compared to the two minutes with the iBook.

Well, it's late and I'm tired.

Go Away

Fuck Bush!

Well, thanks to our "wounderful" President, my Powerbook G4 is stuck in customs due to heightend security.

I called FedEX and tracked my package and said that it was due this morning at 10:30am. But, it's a no show. So I spoke to a FedEX rep. (who are three times more friendly then UPS reps.) and said that it should be leaving customs when they get paper work from Apple.

I call Apple, I ask them "What the dealy-o?" and they said that in worst case scenarios it's in there for 24-48 hours... I'm approaching 48th hour mark.

I'm feeling like a crack addict with a fix. I need it, now!

Magic Mountain Time

In about a half hour I'm going to be on the road, headed towards Magic Mountain.

We're going 'cuz Gina's in town and she wants to do something and Magic Mountain it is. The other option would have been a trip to Vegas. That sounded like super fun, but for some reason they decided against it. Oh well, maybe some other time, huh?

I don't go on many rides, I have a very weak stomach. I get nauseated from going upside down, so I only go on fast-drop type rides. colossus, Goliath, Superman. And that's pretty much it.

Gina and Michael have been in town since Saturday and they haven't done anything exciting since they got here. Unless you count the Mexican swap meet. I sure don't.

My City

I was just doing some searches on the 'net about Japanese and Bakersfield. I discovered some really cool things.

The first Japanese to arrive were sixty laborers hired by the Kern County Land Company through a labor contractor in 1889, eventually they left the area and KCLC hired more Japanese directly. During this time, the only Japanese women in the area were reportedly to have been three prostitutes. By 1899 Sutematsu Murakami and Kohei Tanaka had settled down and opened their own business, a bambooware store.

In the year of 1896 oil was discovered and the demand for laborers had sky rocketed. The Santa Fe Railroad company employed enough laborers to justify the construction of a labor camp facility for them. Fortunately, due to the demand of laborers and the high cost of living, the workers were well paid for their time.

19th, 20th and 21st streets were considered to be Chinatown in 1911. Though many of the Chinese style buildings are gone, a handfull still exist in the area (The Far East Cafe). Three inns, four billiard parlors, two barber shops, two stores and a bathhouse were all owned and operated by Japanese laborers.

I got this information from here Five Views: A History of Japanese Americans in California. The site is down, but the link is from Google's cache.

Scary Dad

Well, I just got the fright of my life just now.

I turn on my cell phone and theres a message from my dad, "Michael, it's you dad. Call me." but he's saying it in a very scary way. Like in a way that he's pissed off at me or something bad has happened. So I start worrying and call my mom's house. No answer. Call her cell phone. No answer. I'm thinking that maybe her knee went out and she went in the hospital, or worse.

So, I call my dad's cell and this what he says "Mom told me you wanted to get the computer." I told him I already ordered it and then I told him about the washer dryer combo and Lowe's. What a relief.

My dad needs better phone skills.

Now It’s Time to Pay The Price

As of ten minutes ago, consider me $3000 poorer.

I just purchased a PowerBook G4. I got the 867mhz version and added a 60gb version and a Superdrive. Very cool. The Superdrive is the DVD-R/CD-R burner, it was only an extra $200 bucks. So I'm guessing it'll be worth it, I think.

The only bad thing about it was that I had to pay with my credit card. Which mean I'm gonna be paying intrest for a hella long time. The interest is like 14.99% which, at the current balance, adds up to an extra thirty bucks a month! So, hopefully I'll have it paid off by the end of the year. Atleast I wont have to sell my kidney if I do that (but, I don't need two, right?).

I should have it in about a week. Kari, the Apple Store chick who helped me, said it takes about 1-3 days to build it and 2-4 days for it to be shipped to my house. Though she said it should be sooner due to the fact that it's being shipped from Sacramento.

Now where did I put that scalpel?

Now It’s Time to Pay The Price

As of ten minutes ago, consider me $3000 poorer.

I just purchased a PowerBook G4. I got the 867mhz version and added a 60gb version and a Superdrive. Very cool. The Superdrive is the DVD-R/CD-R burner, it was only an extra $200 bucks. So I'm guessing it'll be worth it, I think.

The only bad thing about it was that I had to pay with my credit card. Which mean I'm gonna be paying intrest for a hella long time. The interest is like 14.99% which, at the current balance, adds up to an extra thirty bucks a month! So, hopefully I'll have it paid off by the end of the year. Atleast I wont have to sell my kidney if I do that (but, I don't need two, right?).

I should have it in about a week. Kari, the Apple Store chick who helped me, said it takes about 1-3 days to build it and 2-4 days for it to be shipped to my house. Though she said it should be sooner due to the fact that it's being shipped from Sacramento.

Now where did I put that scalpel?

Champagne Farts and Caviar Burps

In about an hour Ruben will be here to install the new shower tub combo in the bathroom. It's a really nice two piece tub. Now, two piece means that the wall and tub are seperate so that it's easier to fit in doors and stuff.

Now, I'm not I gigantic monster and I'm not a stick. But, the tub is pretty small. I'm used to nice, roomy showers. In my current bathroom I have what's called a neo-angle shower. That's just a fancy way of saying it goes in the corner. But the nice thing about those is that they are roomy.

But, Lila wanted a tub. So I insisted on a tub for the bathroom. I personally cannot stand to take a bath, just the idea of sitting in your own dirt for an hour doesn't exactly appeal to me. But she likes baths. So I figured, why not? The things I do for love.

Champagne Farts and Caviar Burps

In about an hour Ruben will be here to install the new shower tub combo in the bathroom. It's a really nice two piece tub. Now, two piece means that the wall and tub are seperate so that it's easier to fit in doors and stuff.

Now, I'm not I gigantic monster and I'm not a stick. But, the tub is pretty small. I'm used to nice, roomy showers. In my current bathroom I have what's called a neo-angle shower. That's just a fancy way of saying it goes in the corner. But the nice thing about those is that they are roomy.

But, Lila wanted a tub. So I insisted on a tub for the bathroom. I personally cannot stand to take a bath, just the idea of sitting in your own dirt for an hour doesn't exactly appeal to me. But she likes baths. So I figured, why not? The things I do for love.

God Bless Freeware

I've just found the greatest piece of freeware from Kung-Foo Software called Kung-Log.

It allows you to post and edit your weblog entries without using a web browser. I went looking for such a program when I found out that Safari didn't work very well with my blog software, Movable Type. It seemed to log me out when posting an entry, instead of rebuilding the pages.

It's really super funky, you can insert HTML code with ease by simply using a drop down menu. You can insert what you're listening to in iTunes using really easy meta-tags. About the only thing that's missing is a spell check, which is no big deal.

Turning On The Penguin

It's offical. As of midnight today (about an hour and a half ago) I will not use Windows in my house for the next month. All Linux, all the time.

I figured if I could make the switch from Windows to Mac, why not Windows to Linux? Most everything I want is available naitvely on Linux and everything else I could just emulate under Wine (which, in that popular GNU naming way, stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. Get it?), Evolution to replace Outlook. I already ditched IE for Mozilla months ago.

I just have to pick up a couple good Linux books first. I've already got the Red Hat Bible but it's for Red Hat 7. I've got version 8 installed.

I just recently got so fed up with Microsoft and all there security patches. I mean when you have an operating system and you release three to five 'security patches' every month, what does that tell me?

Bad programing + Bad code = angry users.

God Bless Freeware

I've just found the greatest piece of freeware from Kung-Foo Software called Kung-Log.

It allows you to post and edit your weblog entries without using a web browser. I went looking for such a program when I found out that Safari didn't work very well with my blog software, Movable Type. It seemed to log me out when posting an entry, instead of rebuilding the pages.

It's really super funky, you can insert HTML code with ease by simply using a drop down menu. You can insert what you're listening to in iTunes using really easy meta-tags. About the only thing that's missing is a spell check, which is no big deal.

Turning On The Penguin

It's offical. As of midnight today (about an hour and a half ago) I will not use Windows in my house for the next month. All Linux, all the time.

I figured if I could make the switch from Windows to Mac, why not Windows to Linux? Most everything I want is available naitvely on Linux and everything else I could just emulate under Wine (which, in that popular GNU naming way, stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. Get it?), Evolution to replace Outlook. I already ditched IE for Mozilla months ago.

I just have to pick up a couple good Linux books first. I've already got the Red Hat Bible but it's for Red Hat 7. I've got version 8 installed.

I just recently got so fed up with Microsoft and all there security patches. I mean when you have an operating system and you release three to five 'security patches' every month, what does that tell me?

Bad programing + Bad code = angry users.

RSS Feeds Are Cool!

Well, I've finally got around to messing around with RSS feeds. It's pretty fuckin' rad. It enables the user to agrogate a bunch of news and other weblog feeds into one single program.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, depending on who you ask. Either way it's a way an XML standard for syndicating content over the web. So anyone can use a use program other than a web browser to get news and information.

There are couple of program that you can use to read RSS feeds NetNewsWire Lite on OS X and NewsDesk on Windows.

I decided to provide two different RSS feeds for people with and with out broadband. Even though the full articles aren't huge, there are people who have hundreds of feeds to download.

They are:

• The last 7 full posts: http://manshorts.net/index.xml
  
• Headlines and Excerpts: http://manshorts.net/excerpts.xml

Just enter in the URL into your favorite and your good to go. The excerpts are much smallers in size, therefore it's quicker to download.

RSS Feeds Are Cool!

Well, I've finally got around to messing around with RSS feeds. It's pretty fuckin' rad. It enables the user to agrogate a bunch of news and other weblog feeds into one single program.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, depending on who you ask. Either way it's a way an XML standard for syndicating content over the web. So anyone can use a use program other than a web browser to get news and information.

There are couple of program that you can use to read RSS feeds NetNewsWire Lite on OS X and NewsDesk on Windows.

I decided to provide two different RSS feeds for people with and with out broadband. Even though the full articles aren't huge, there are people who have hundreds of feeds to download.

They are:

• The last 7 full posts: http://manshorts.net/index.xml

• Headlines and Excerpts: http://manshorts.net/excerpts.xml

Just enter in the URL into your favorite and your good to go. The excerpts are much smallers in size, therefore it's quicker to download.

Faux-Vinyl

Well, I'm sitting on my mom's couch, watching a South Park re-run. Surfing the web and listening to a SomaFM radio stream at 24kbps!

Yeah, that's right. I'm listening to a muddy, distorted feed. I could be listening to a decent almost cd-like 112kbps stream, but I choose not. I love the way it sounds. It sorta reminds me of a worn out vinyl, something thats been played over and over. You can tell where it's been played the most, the part of the album that made that connection with the listener that made their brain and ears go "It's all worth it for this".

I only listen to internet radio these days. I've given up completely on the non digital radio. It just makes me angry listening to it, the same god-awful songs over and over again. How many times can one radio station play the same damn song, over and over and over again. Who was it that said 'kill your radio'?

Which brings me to a quick note about MTV. The other night I mistakingly left it on, and I swear to god, they played the same four fuckin' video... ALL NIGHT!

Anyone tuning in to this great station would have a wide selection of, the new Linkin Park, 50 cent, the new Jay-Z song and that video where all those people are dancing in the basement and the old guy gets mad and kicks 'em out. That's all they played for SIX HOURS. SIX! Not two. Not three. SIX! From 1am to 7am that's all I heard (I was on the phone so I wasn't really into the television at the time).

The Woes of Beta Testing.

So I'm trying out the new beta version of Apple's new web browser, Safari. And so far, I'm undecided.

It's much quicker then my current browser, Chimera/Camino. And it has the 'brushed metal' look turned on by default, which some may or may not like.

I'm using the new v67 beta and it has tabbed browsing which is why I used Camino over Safari in the first place. Everything was fine until I got the urged to check my site, and BOOM! Everything was rendered horribly. It was like a a four-year old child tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle by just forcing pieces in with a hammer.

But, I'm sticking with Safari for now. Gotta show my support for Apple.

Faux-Vinyl

Well, I'm sitting on my mom's couch, watching a South Park re-run. Surfing the web and listening to a SomaFM radio stream at 24kbps!

Yeah, that's right. I'm listening to a muddy, distorted feed. I could be listening to a decent almost cd-like 112kbps stream, but I choose not. I love the way it sounds. It sorta reminds me of a worn out vinyl, something thats been played over and over. You can tell where it's been played the most, the part of the album that made that connection with the listener that made their brain and ears go "It's all worth it for this".

I only listen to internet radio these days. I've given up completely on the non digital radio. It just makes me angry listening to it, the same god-awful songs over and over again. How many times can one radio station play the same damn song, over and over and over again. Who was it that said 'kill your radio'?

Which brings me to a quick note about MTV. The other night I mistakingly left it on, and I swear to god, they played the same four fuckin' video... ALL NIGHT!

Anyone tuning in to this great station would have a wide selection of, the new Linkin Park, 50 cent, the new Jay-Z song and that video where all those people are dancing in the basement and the old guy gets mad and kicks 'em out. That's all they played for SIX HOURS. SIX! Not two. Not three. SIX! From 1am to 7am that's all I heard (I was on the phone so I wasn't really into the television at the time).

The Woes of Beta Testing.

So I'm trying out the new beta version of Apple's new web browser, Safari. And so far, I'm undecided.

It's much quicker then my current browser, Chimera/Camino. And it has the 'brushed metal' look turned on by default, which some may or may not like.

I'm using the new v67 beta and it has tabbed browsing which is why I used Camino over Safari in the first place. Everything was fine until I got the urged to check my site, and BOOM! Everything was rendered horribly. It was like a a four-year old child tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle by just forcing pieces in with a hammer.

But, I'm sticking with Safari for now. Gotta show my support for Apple.